the re-design

Comments by Mike Cook

Introduction

During March 2003 I began researching in to web design/markup techniques with my main goals being to only learn design methodology's that would not be out of date within a year or so. After some time I realised that the web is moving towards seperating style from content by use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the newer XML technology's (XSL, XSLT, etc)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) layed out guidelines that have become 'Web Standards' and many organisations have been set up to promote these recommendations, with the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and A List Apart being among the fore-runners. By working towards these standards now, we secure the future of our websites and allow them to be viewed in any browser whether they be brail readers or speech browsers, and many off-desktop devices such as PDA and cellphones. WaSP says that by working towards these standards we will be able to, ...reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. For the world wide community this can only be a good thing.

In my attempts to learn these standards I decide I needed a real world scenario to work with. After much deliberation I concluded that a site containing more of the written word than of graphics would be a more suitable place to start and Mufossa's Home Page was the perfect candidate.

The Changes

All original content created by Matthew A. Fossa has remained unchanged except for some minor alterations, and only in areas that would help make the site work better with the new styles.

I would like to thank Matt Fossa for wanting to use my first attempts at XHTML. I hope my work allows his material to be accessible for many years to come.

- Mike Cook

Sites I've Authored

Click here to go to Mufossa's Home Page

Comments by Matt Fossa

Well, being the webmaster of my own web site has been a real enjoyable experience. Not to forget the incredible generosity of Dylan Smith for free space on his great Alioth Network server has allowed me to run a clean, ad-free, and fast-loading website for almost four years!

The many thousands of loyal fans who have visited and read my stories and listened to my music may have found its original layout to be crude... and they were right! I was interested in giving a very bare-bones site that was more focused on quality content than on eye candy. Still, I had begun to wonder if it was, perhaps, time to experiment and make a few changes to the layout, maybe add some graphics. Sadly though, real life (my musical career) has kept me so busy that I couldn't find enough time to devote to this idea.

Some force in the universe had to have heard my silent musings. It certainly was very surprising to get an e-mail message out of the blue by a fellow fan of the game Elite stating that he'd downloaded my site and was toying with it to teach himself a new coding technique! Naturally, I was quite flattered and when he showed me the work he'd done, it took me a good five minutes to realize that I needed to pick my jaw up off the floor!

This new layout is entirely Mike Cook's doing! Yes, he asked me about color and background schemes, but the dirty work of coding it: That was all him! So, if you like what you see, make darn sure you drop him a line and tell him what a great job he did and to keep up the good work! The nice thing is, as he promised, coding my own additions wasn't too hard to do. (As the existence of this paragraph can attest to!)

Thanks ever so much again, Mike! I really and truly appreciate it!

- Matt Fossa